Terming the municipal corporations as "the biggest polluters" of Yamuna, the Supreme Court today rebuked the civic bodies for saying that they had nothing to do with the pollution of the river.

Terming the municipal corporations as "the biggest polluters" of Yamuna, the Supreme Court today rebuked the civic bodies for saying that they had nothing to do with the pollution of the river.

It warned that all its three commissioners would have to appear before the court if it persisted with its stand.

"MCD (read civic agencies) are the biggest polluters. They allow all domestic and industrial effluents into the river. Yet they say that they have no role to play," a bench of justices A K Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar observed. The counsel drew the apex court's ire after he submitted that unlike other agencies, the MCD has no role to play in the de-pollution driver.

On February 27, the apex court had asked the Centre and the governments of Haryana, Delhi and UP to give information on the expenditure incurred by them for making the Yamuna clean. It had asked the Central Water Pollution Control Board to take a sample of river Yamuna's water and submit a report on its cleanliness.

"The Central Water Pollution Control Board shall take samples of water of river Yamuna from the states of Haryana, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh till Agra and submit their report within four weeks," the bench had said.It directed all the authorities related to the work of controlling the river's pollution to give details of the steps taken by them in this regard.

The court had issued the direction taking suo motu cognisance of an article on pollution in Yamuna published in a national daily in 1994.